Pasties are Cornish origin and, apologies to any Cornishmen out there, I don't like them because they have too much dough. Of course, the pastie was intended to be a self-contained lunch for a miner. It had to be sturdy to survive in the mine.

As we have them here, Australian pies are slightly oval. The crust is not as crisp as most American pot pies and quite tender. when you order mince and cheese, you get mince and cheese. There are no vegetables apart from a bit of onion for flavor.

As you can tell, unless you want ethnic food, almost all your options are chain restaurants. Which are not necessarily bad options, but it would be nice to have other options. The first time I ever had thai food was last year on vacation, because we just don't have any thai places within 45 minutes of home. We usually eat Mexican, steak, or sushi.

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My city has pretty much everything mentioned here these days with the exception of whatever a "carvery" is (and if I knew what that was, we probably have one -- something to do with carved meat, I presume?) and Finnish food, and I don't think our one Russian place is still running. Our only Aussie places are of the pie variety, and I can't say I've enjoyed my limited experiences.

I'm in a largish town in the UK. We don't have as much variety as I think we could, London has amazing variety and I miss living there sometimes. Here, we have mainly Italian, Indian and Chinese. Precious little Mexican, which is a pity cos I love Mexican food.

We have a pretty good variety considering our size, it's thanks to all us public servants on decent incomes I started listing things but it got too long too quickly! We can get pretty much any kind of Asian/South Pacific style of food you can imagine, the standard European cusines, most food chains.

No pie floaters around here though, you need to go to Adelaide or visit Harry's Cafe de Wheels in Sydney for those

Aussie pies are nothing like pasties. They are just like most pies I bought in the UK but require much more tomato sause, none of that brown sauce rubbish

original Cornish pasties you weren't meant to eat the crust - that was your 'handle' as the miners hands would be filthy and no way of washing them

Interesting to know and it explains a lot. There's a place in Madison WI that sells Cornish Pasties under the name of 'Teddy Wedges'. The fillings were good but you almost needed a blasting cap to get into the thing.

We have almost everything from Chinese to Thai with good ole Southern Soul Food (Fried Chicken, potato salad, collard greens and the works!) with a mix of Northern Diners (they have the best food and a couple of them are 24 hours!) We also have BBQ places (which around here is a noun, not a verb) that covers Eastern North Carolina Style (whole hog with the sauce being vinegar based) to Lexington Style (mostly shoulders and Boston B*tt with a mustard based sauce) with nearby Rock Hill, SC which also serves BBQ (again, mustard based, but with a little more kick to it). We don't have a Russian restaurant but I would love to try one just to see what it was like. We have had several restaurants mentioned on the Food Network (Prices Chicken Coop and that drive-in on the west side, whose name escapes me at the moment!).

Talking about food is making me hungry and it's lunchtime!

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We also have tons of Asian food, with Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese and Indian being the most common.

Italian, French, and Greek are well represented, along with the Middle East.

Portions are generally huge. I've been known to make three meals out of my leftovers of one particular dish from my favorite TexMex. I almost never eat out without taking home at least part of my meal. Very upscale restaurants generally have smaller portions.

LOL about Outback Steakhouse. I think it's generally known that it's nothing more than a steakhouse and that the Australian slant is nothing more than a gimmick. My ILs love that place and the only time I ever go is when I'm with them.